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Entries tagged with 'Vanity Fair'
Posted Nov. 2, 2009,
Eight Items or Less: Roisin Murphy's New Song & Clive Davis's Awkward Interview
By Gary Pini
1. You know we love Roisin Murphy. If you're also a fan, click here and you can hear her new single.2. Surfing? '50s music? Are we in a time warp? If we told you six months ago that the retro wheels of pop music might be headed back to the beach, you might have laughed. And if we mentioned Florida? No way. Well, listen to The Drums and Surfer Blood. Both bands are from the Sunshine State and both are getting worldwide attention for their hipster-gone-surfing sound. We're getting a woodie!
3. The Fifth Annual Shred for Your Life Guitar Battle takes place tomorrow, November 3rd at 7 p.m., at Santos Party House (100 Lafayette Street). This year's judges are David Cross, Jaleel Bunton and Paul Major.
4. Augusten Burroughs is reading from his latest You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas today, Monday, November 2, at Barnes & Noble on Union Square.
5. Here's a very awkward Vanity Fair interview with Clive Davis. It's the 35th anniversary of Clive's Arista Records and he'll be speaking at NYU Kimmel Center (60 Washington Square South) on November 4 at 7 p.m.
Posted Mar. 19, 2009,
West Side Story Gets the Vanity Fair Treatmant
By Whitney Spaner
In celebration of the new Broadway revival of West Side Story opening on Broadway tonight, directed by the legendary Arthur Laurents, who wrote the original book for the musical, Vanity Fair put together quite the WSS-tribute spread. Shot by Mark Seliger, the photo story recreates stills from the 1961 film with Jennifer Lopez as Anita, Rodrigo Santoro as Bernardo, Chris Evans as Riff, Camilla Belle, who makes a beautiful Maria, and Ben Barnes is her lover Tony. The casting is amazing! Is there a new movie remake on the way as well? It's a real West Side Story renaissance!
Pictured from vanityfair.com is a scene from the "Prologue" of West Side Story with Chris Evans as Riff, the leader of the Jets and Rodrigo Santoro as Bernardo the leader of the Sharks.
Posted Sep. 10, 2008,
Books on PAPERMAG: Adam Davies, Author of Mine All Mine
By Rebecca Carroll
I first read Adam Davies about six years ago, when his debut novel The Frog King came out. The protagonist is a total asshole, but I somehow loved the book. Really delicious, rhythmic dialogue, smart-headed conversations between characters and a substantive, believable (if in a bummer-ish kind of way) plot. Since then, the novel has been optioned for film with a screenplay by Bret Easton Ellis, and very possibly Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the lead role as self-centered cad Harry Driscoll.
I missed Davies’ second novel, Goodbye Lemon, but I sure as hell read his latest, Mine All Mine, which celebrated writer David Benioff calls in his cover blurb, “A rollicking, rocking good read.” I’d say that about sums it up. It’s a sleuth-type novel, a thriller of sorts -- neither of which, I must admit, are really my genre. But I admire good writing, in whatever form or genre it comes, and Adam Davies is just a honey pot, pure and simple. We met last month at an intimate luncheon for Mine hosted by Pineapple Express actor James Franco, a friend of Davies, at Michael’s restaurant in New York. Graydon Carter was there.
Posted Aug. 15, 2008,
Howe It Will Be
By Phil Smrek
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This weekend, American born Andrew Howe will attempt to long jump to gold for his adopted Italy. The 23-year-old phenomenon won silver at the '07 world championships in Osaka, Japan by leaping a personal best, 8.47 meters. The night before the event, his mother (Howe's coach and former '84 Olympic hopeful), Renee' Felton, had a vision. Unbeknown to her son, Felton wrote the exact distance of his jump inside his track shoes, and upon seeing the result posted both went into trance like states.
Mother and son have been immutable partners in 'athletics' since a four-year-old Andrew followed her lead around the track in the children's 200 meter at Santa Monica community college -- finishing first with a time of 58.4 seconds.
Posted Jul. 21, 2008,
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: The Trailer
By Alexis Swerdloff
I loved Toby Young's juicy Vanity Fair villifying memoir How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, but after watching this trailer, I can't decide whether the film adaptation, starring Simon Pegg, Kirsten Dunst, Megan Fox and Jeff Bridges (as Graydon Carter), is going to be good, bad or... a straight-up male rip-off of Devil Wears Prada. Either way, I'll probably see it on opening night!
Posted Apr. 23, 2008,
About Last Night... Vanity Fair's Tribeca Film Fest Party, La Reve: Indulge the Dream and Helmut Lang's Sloane Crosley Book Party
By Caroline Torem Craig
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The Vanity Fair party, which traditionally kicks off the Tribeca Film Festival, has become almost a déjà vu happening, in that every year “the regulars” attend. Don’t get me wrong, this is not a shabby guest list, starting with the likes of Robert De Niro and Grace Hightower, Martha Stewart, Iman and David Bowie, Diane Von Furstenberg, Jane Rosenthal and Jerry and Jessica Seinfeld. I thought I spotted a new face, one that could launch a thousand ships, among the arriving guests, but then I realized Zoe Kravitz had attended this party before, with her dad Lenny.
Over at the Puck Building, La Reve: Indulge the Dream, a benefit for Michael J. Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, took place. Folks like Samantha Cole, Ricki Lake and Mya, dressed to the nines, lent their support.
Helmut Lang threw Sloane Crosley a glitzy book party for her essay collection, I Was Told There’d Be Cake at their Meatpacking District store. Literary types (Jonathan Ames and A.M. Homes) and fashion world heavyweights (Meredith Melling Burke and Gilles Mendel) were present and accounted for.
If I write a book I am going to title it I Was Told There’d Be a Goody Bag!
Posted Mar. 31, 2008,
Eight Items or Less: Madonna's Coming, Sebastian Horsley's "Unputdownable" and PAPER's Still Hip!
By Gary Pini
1. Though its release is still a month away, we are already feeling the marketing blitz for Madonna's new album Hard Candy (out April 29). Her documentary on Malawi is screening at the Tribeca Film Festival, she's on the cover of the new Vanity Fair and, according to UK paper The Telegraph, she has already sold most of the songs on her album to various worldwide advertisers including Fuji, Unilever and Vodafone. Vodaphone has apparently made a deal to make seven tracks available exclusively on their mobile phones one week before the album's official release.
2. Yes, we read Sebastian Horsley's unputdownable autobiography Dandy in the Underworld over the weekend and it does deserve all the hype. It's also timely, as we noted this morning that 17-year-old British actor Thomas Sangster has been chosen for the lead role in Steven Spielberg's film adaptation of Tintin, one of Mr. Horsley's fondest -- and most normal -- childhood memories: "I worshipped him. Tintin was for children who found Asterix too intellectual." No word yet on who will play Horsley in the film of Dandy.
3. It's hard to sell toilet paper without being... well, you know, gross. New Yorkers are currently debating the appropriateness of the new Cottonelle subway ad campaign that includes the headline: "We shine where the sun don't."
Posted Feb. 19, 2008,
Mr. Mickey Hearts Alex Pettyfer
By Mickey Boardman
How cute is this kid? His name is Alex Pettyfer and he was photographed at the Burberry-Vanity Fair party in London. MM, being the hard hitting journalist that he is, has no idea who the kid is, but luckily being cute is enough news to make it into a post here at the Mr. Mickey blog!
[Ed: Pettyfer is an English actor, who starred in 2006's Stormbreaker and will next be seen opposite Emma Roberts, Natasha Richardson and Aidan Quinn in the upcoming Lucy Dahl (daughter of Roald) film Wild Child. He is also a Burberry model, which explains his presence at the party!]
Photo from Style.com
Posted Sep. 7, 2007,
Fabian Basabe's Epic Evening
By Fabian Basabe
Let me start off by saying I was nursing an epic hangover all day!! EPIC.
So, after the ADAM show yesterday I went to the "Artrageous" party hosted by Vanity Fair at Bloomingdales. it was an amazing set-up and for a fantastic cause. If I were as talented and artist as some of those whose works were being auctioned, I would paint you a picture, but I just cannot. Think fun, bright lights, beautiful models in balloon fashions, art installations and pretty people. So that's all I needed, but I loved seeing Chris Benz (more on him next week), VF's Darryl Brantley and Bob Collacello.
OK, let’s take a second and talk about this New York City taxi strike!!! I paid 40 dollars to go ten blocks!! Something about crossing zones... what is this, DC? When I was there last for the Presidential Inauguration, I learned the hard way that you can literally take a 30 minute cab ride for six dollars if you stay in one zone, but if you take a cab two blocks and happen to cross a zone it will cost you 27 dollars!!
I miss my Hummer... cabs are bullsh*#t!
Posted Jun. 25, 2007,
Darwin's Nightmare: See It
By Ann Magnuson
I saw the DVD of Hubert Sauper's 2004 documentary Darwin's Nightmare over the weekend and I highly recommend this movie to everyone. It's one of the most difficult things I've ever seen and probably one of the most essential. This YouTube viewer made the above complilation but you can see more scenes from the film here and here.
Sauper's style is at times quite brutal in it's unflinching directness and yet also poetic. There is no narrator and many things are left unexplained, but he captures the uneasy strangeness of Africa, a place where great beauty and great cruelty too often co-exist. The DVD extras feature a very good interview with the director who explains how globilization and social Darwinism are at the root of much of the evil the befalls the poor souls who are unlucky enough to be born poor and in Africa. Vanity Fair and a host of A-list celebrities are currently propelling "the dark continent" into the limelight but Sauper's films take us places than Annie Liebowitz never could. I could not believe the things I was seeing and will truly never be the same after watching Sauper's films.
Posted Apr. 30, 2007,
Eight Items or Less: Tracy Morgan SCRAMs, Vanity Fair Discovers Yoga and Pete Wentz Gets His East Village on Tonight
By Alexis Swerdloff
1. It's an exciting time to be English. Kate Moss’s Top Shop line debuts tomorrow! According to Reuters, “To try prevent fights among shoppers when the doors open, each person will be able to buy only five items.”
2. Apparently, Vanity Fair is running a “yoga spread” with high-profile yogaphiles (Donna Karan, Sting and Trudie Styler, Ali MacGraw, etc.) for their June issue. Doesn’t that seem very 1997 to you?
3. Ben Brantley gives new musical Legally Blonde a pretty middling review in the Times today calling it superficial, potentially anti-lesbian and compares watching the show to eating candy. While a cute comparison, he took the candy metaphor and ran with it in a serious way. In the first three grafs alone, he mentions that audience members might want to floss between songs, and dropped M&Ms, Hershey’s, empty-calories, Gummi-Bears and “confectionary charms.” We get it, it’s candy-like. No need to hit us over the head.
4. We’ve never heard of a SCRAM (Secure Continuous Remote Alcohol Monitoring) bracelet before, but apparently Tracy Morgan has to wear one! A result of a DUI charge and a subsequent probation violation, Morgan will have to wear a SCRAM for the next 90 days that will check his blood alcohol content every 30 minutes. How Orwellian! Now that Alec Baldwin may not return to 30 Rock for a second season, we especially hope that Morgan doesn’t mess up and drink, because a 30 Rock without Baldwin and Morgan would be no 30 Rock at all!
5. So long dodgeball, hello Dance Dance Revolution. According to the New York Times, gym teachers across the country are using the Japanese video game Dance Dance Revolution in P.E. classes. The article suggests that “more than 1,500 schools are expected to be using the game by the end of the decade.”
6. Tonight’s the opening of the Pete Wentz/Gym Class Heroes bar in the East Village… Look out for Wentz’s GF Ashlee Simpson on Avenue A.
7. Feist’s The Reminder received a whopping score of 8.8 on Pitchfork today. Go, Feist, go!
Posted Apr. 27, 2007,
Reporting from the Front Lines of the Vanity Fair Tribeca Film Fest Party
By Alexis Swerdloff
PAPER nightlife photographer Caroline Torem Craig is the nightlife photographer to end all nightlife photographer. Here's her report from the Vanity Fair's Tribeca Film Festival opening night party the other night:
On a warm and breezy Monday evening, celebrities ascended the beautifully-dressed Supreme Court steps (I am referring to hundreds of tiny candles and orange lights). It was the Vanity Fair opening party for the Tribeca Film Festival. Every year it is THE challenge to catch a flick of of Robert DeNiro as he makes one last grimace and races by the red carpet. David Bowie usually leaves the "posing " to Iman but this year, to our delight, he was incredibly animated and shared with us the fact that this was their 12th year anniversary. As he neared my camera, I asked if they were "still spiders from Mars." I truly don't know if he heard me, but this little dance move occurred out of the blue.
It was such a TRIP to see Narciso Rodriguez direct Jessica Seinfeld to pose for PAPER.
While it is common knowledge that Whoopi Goldberg can be cranky, this evening she told ET (as she glanced at nearby guest Kerri Washington), "See, I lost her in weight -- I lost 43 pounds and that's just about what she weighs."
Some of the other guests were Minnie Driver, Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, Harvey Wenstein, Amy Sacco, Amy Fine Collins, Christy Turlington and Ed Burns, Walter Cronkite and host Graydon Carter. Interesting note: these were all loyal attendees last year and the year before.
One of the most bizarre questions posed to Kerri Washington was what she thought about Alec Baldwin's tirade and inappropriate phone call to his daughter. Without skipping a beat, she replied she was not a parent so couldn't comment except to say anything that took our minds off the war in Iraq was a good thing.
(Photos by Caroline Torem Craig. From left to right, Robert DeNiro, Grace Hightower, Iman, David Bowie, Jessica Seinfeld, Narciso Rodriguez and Kerri Washington.)